Educators and educational support staff are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of systematic efforts to support students' social and emotional growth. Logically, the success of social-emotional learning programs depends upon the ability of educators to assess student's ability to process and utilize social-emotional information and use…

Sense of coherence (SOC) is a relevant contributor and predictor of the individuals' mental and physical health. There are a number of studies about SOC, but only two validation articles of the sense of coherence scale (SOCS) were found on adolescents and none on children. The aim of this research was to validate the SOC scale in youth under 18.…

The School Refusal Assessment Scale-Revised (SRAS-R) is a widely used measure of the functional conditions leading to school absenteeism. In the present study, we developed a German version of the SRAS-R and investigated its psychometric properties in a clinical sample (N = 62) of referred school absentees aged 11 to 17 years. Results of an…

Managing behaviour is a complex component of the teaching process and one that teachers consistently identify as an area of great concern. This study aimed to examine teachers' perceptions regarding their competence for managing the challenging behaviour of young children and to identify the factors that affect these beliefs. A total of 204…

This study aimed at developing a valid and reliable instrument for measuring attitudes of primary schoolteachers toward inappropriate student behaviour. A systematic approach was used to develop the scale. Results provide preliminary evidence that the new instrument (consisting of 13 items on a six-point Likert type scale) meets the standards for…

This study focuses on the degree, nature and consequences of bullying or inappropriate behaviour among faculty personnel (n = 303) in a Finnish university. A total of 114 (38%) faculty members answered the email questionnaire. According to the results, 15% of the respondents had experienced bullying; in addition, 45% had experienced inappropriate…

Community contexts are important ecological settings related to problem behavior and positive youth development (PYD). While substantial work has focused on neighborhood disadvantage, the current study explores the role of community assets, specifically linkages to important institutional resources and people in those settings. These concepts are…

Parent empowerment involves the ability of caregivers to meet the needs of their family while maintaining feelings of control and is particularly important for families of children at-risk. It is necessary to establish reliable and valid tools to measure parent empowerment. The purpose of this study was to examine the internal factor structure,…

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale that measures adolescents' attitudes toward classroom incivility and determine whether items would reveal subscales. A sample of 549 adolescents between ages 11 and 18 (53.1% boys; M[subscript age] = 13.90, SD = 1.41) completed items written to measure attitudes toward classroom incivility. An…

Children's social competence and behavioral adjustment are key issues for child development, education, and clinical research. Cross-cultural analyses are necessary to provide relevant methods of assessing them for cross-cultural research. The aim of the current study was to contribute to this important line of research by validating the 3-factor…

Purpose: This study examined the construct validity and reliability of a therapeutic alliance measure (Children's Alliance Questionnaire [CAQ]) for children with psychosocial and/or behavioral problems, receiving therapeutic residential care or day care in the Netherlands. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis of a one-factor model ''therapeutic…

Modern attempts to explain why some assessment tools are readily adopted by school-based personnel whereas others are not have focused on the concept of usability. Usability encompasses not only the degree to which consumers find an assessment tool to be acceptable, but also the degree to which it is well-understood, believed to be feasible,…

This study examined the viability of a brief, parent-reported strengths and needs assessment as the first step in a multiple-gating approach to proactive positive behavior support for families. The "Positive Family Support--Strengths and Needs Assessment" (PFS-SaNA) was designed to collaboratively engage parents early in the school year…

This assessment examined the presence of anti-citizenship behavior (ACB) in the college classroom by (1) identifying the types of ACB college students use in their classes, (2) identifying the reasons why students use ACB, and (3) exploring the link between ACB and student learning outcomes. The results indicated that (1) participants report four…

Early identification of school alienation is of great importance for students' educational outcomes and successful participation in society. This study examined the psychometric characteristics of a newly developed assessment instrument, the School Alienation Scale (SALS), to measure school alienation among primary and secondary school students.…